Perhaps one of the most exciting parts of attending the annual MoCCA Festival (the eclectic comicbook convention that supports the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art in New York City) is the appearance of youthful, energetic, entertaining, and incredibly talented newcomers to the field. We were reminded of this when we crossed paths with Emma T. Capps, a 14-year old, award-winning author, artist, and creator of The Chapel Chronicles, an on-line & print comic that details the wildly silly antics of an 11-year old girl named Chapel Smith.
According to her bio, Capps chose — for her eighth grade year-long project, to design, produce, and market an entire line of greeting cards. She did so well with this that in 2010 her hobby metamorphed into an actual business, and in February 2011she launched The Chapel Chronicles online store via Zazzle.com. All of the cards in the line feature Chapel Smith, with greetings ranging from “Don’t worry I didn’t put your real age….Happy Birthday!” and “Take THAT Piñata” to “These people know how to travel” (on a bon voyage card) and “What a day to forget your hair ties” (on a bad hair day card).
Each card also has a Spanish version for sale, as Capps herself is fluent in Spanish and translated all the writing. After deciding to create cards in Spanish, she researched the greeting card market, and discovered that cards for Spanish-speakers are underrepresented. The Chapel store now offers 24 English and Spanish designs on cards, postage stamps, magnets, and other gifts, including pins and postcards.
Capps then extended her brand by translating Chapel to the web in a series of webcomics series, which she publishes on Fridays. As with most of the civilized world Capps has not only begun a blog, but has migrated to Facebook as well. Her blog features sketches and videos of her work, with her eventual goals include her licensing or selling her card designs to a national greeting card company, as well as seeing her comic published.
She recently created a delightful I eight-page minicomic called Jam Days, which she entered in a Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, for teens, for which she won a pair of Regional awards in the California competition. Her win catapulted her into the nationals, and she won there as well. Then with her prestigious awards under her belt she proceeded to MoCCA Fest, where she exhibited her work with about 1,000 exhibitors who attended the event, working her booth with both her parents.
Jam Days tells the (all-to-brief) story of Emma, who gets it in her head to make some cherry plum jam, and heads out into the neighborhood to harvest berries from the cherry plum trees that grow there. The cute story even comes with a cherry plum jam recipe in the back. Her Chapel Chronicles comic serves up snippets of the afore-mentioned Chapel Smith. Each four-panel strip tell a brief story as Chapel moves through her day from being babysat (by one of her dad’s poker buddies), to having dueling music wars (Lady Gaga vs. Justin Bieber) with her mom.
Her artwork is simple and engaging, and her storytelling is charmingly wonderful as she spins each yarn throughout the comic. It is easy to become jaded over the sad state of affairs in the comic industry these days, especially when one has been around for a time. Still with diverse venues like MoCCA, and exciting up-and-coming talent like Capps it is enough to fill one with hope for the future of this industry.
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